My ArcGIS experience has been limited to working on large-scale maps with planar projections. I'm moving to a project in which I want to calculate the distance between pro sports facilities throughout the U.S. and their city's respective downtown/central business district (both defined as geocoded points).
My primary interest is in relative distances, and my question is whether using a geographic coordinate system for US map points and using "Near" to calculate geodesic distances between stadia and downtowns is a sound approach to avoiding issues that would arise from calculating distance based on a projection of the US?